First Light and some help DSI-III

[NickH]

I have one of these on loan for a while, and I must say it's a nice little camera, using the 285 chipset, as found in the colour ATik 16HRC and the Colour H9 cameras. I have an ART285 mono as well, which is frankly the most sensitive and best bit of kit I own, but the DSI-III, being a one shot colour, I think is a nice addition, as it enabled me to use the ART285 to aquire some long luminance data, and then in one go aftre swapping the cams over... add all the colour channels.

This image taken over several nights, due to incoming fog and mist, shows a combination of the L channel from the 285 and the colour data from the DSI-III combined. Still not close to being perfect, but it was first light for me with the DSI, and had some amusing problems getting it and my DSI-C to work alongside each other, as the latter is my guide cam.

Red channel data in the DSI was a mess due to the fog, and it bouncing off the nearby A4 lights, but after a lot of work in CS2 and Maxim, I coaxed this out of it..

Galaxies were pasted back in, after being combined as the images over the 3 nights had different positioning and orientation (swapping cameras...never a great idea), but it's a start.

The DSI-III noise wise and sensitivity wise is obviously not as good as the ART285, which is both peltier and fan cooled, and mono, but if anyone is thinking of a good one shot colour, with only one cable needed, or something to run in parallel to a good mono CCD, then this is a nice bet..

Still lots more to do/learn with it, and getting back in to Envisage is a whole heap of fun..

ED80 at F7.5 on an EQ6 Skyscan version 3.21 firmware

DSI-C guide cam on ST102 at F5

parallel mounted setup

PHD guide software version 1.70 and Meade Envisage, Maxim DL and Art Capture for image aquisition and stacking. CS2 for final post processing

[NickH]

And here's one of the raw sub frames (red channel data only from the DSI-III, split out) to show the fog/seeing issues.. (cropped and rotated for alignment with the other data)